Mooted legislation to cap international student numbers could force Australia’s education sector to cut nearly 10 per cent of its workforce, industry figures have warned in protesting a “rushed policy” and “political smokescreen” that “scapegoats” students.
If passed, the new Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill – part of a government crackdown on exploitation of loopholes in student visa policy that includes a cap on the number of overseas students – would cost Australia’s economy $4.3 billion and see between 14,000 and 22,500 jobs lost in Australia’s 250,000-strong education sector, Universities Australia CEO Luke Sheehy told a recent Senate Education and Employment Legislation Committee hearing.
Throttling international student numbers – a putative attempt to reduce pressure on Australia’s housing markets in student-heavy cities such as Melbourne and Sydney – is “ministerial overreach to an extent we have never seen before,” Sheehy said in pointing out that the government had practically begged international students to return after pandemic numbers plummeted, and was now telling them they are no longer welcome.
“The facts and data do not support this argument” that surging international student numbers have exacerbated the housing crisis,” Sheehy said, warning that “the danger of using these talented people as scapegoats, to blame the housing crisis on, is what we stand to lose by telling them to stay home.”
Noting that education is Australia’s second largest export sector behind mining, Sheehy said the influx of international students last year “almost single-handedly [saved] the nation from recession… the impact of having 60,000 fewer international students arrive on our shores is significant.”
The chief executive and director of Group of Eight – a coalition of Australia’s leading research universities – Vicki Thomson slammed the proposed cuts as “draconian, interventionist… economic vandalism” and said her organisation’s own analysis had suggested that capping international student numbers to 2019 levels would actually cost the economy 22,500 jobs and $5.3 billion.
“It is right that we have a discussion about what the international sector should look like,” Thomson said, “but that cannot be done in isolation to other factors, such as addressing high-end skills shortages and how we fund our research and university sector, and [deliver] on defence projects such as AUKUS.”
The government’s decision “not only makes managing university budgets impossible for 2025,” she said, but last-minute withdrawals of enrolment offers “to students we have long courted… burns them in a cavalier and long-lasting way.”
Evaluating the government’s argument
The National Tertiary Education Union (NTEU) railed against the universities’ forecasts, with national president Dr Alison Barnes calling it “absolutely outrageous for the vice-chancellors’ lobby group to be threatening the jobs of 14,000 academic and professional staff who are an indispensable part of our higher education system.”
“Australia’s broken governance model has fostered an insidious culture in which staff are always the first to pay the price when policy changes are on the horizon,” Barnes said, arguing that the government “must fully fund universities to ensure there’s (sic) no job losses because of changes to international student numbers.”
Despite concern over universities’ overreliance on international student fees, one economic analysis after another has discredited the underlying assumptions of the government’s new policy, with experts arguing that blaming students for Australia’s housing crisis is reductive and inaccurate – with a Student Accommodation Council report suggesting international students make up just 4 per cent of Australia’s rental market and the Property Council of Australia arguing that the students “are not to blame for the housing crisis.”
Penalising them, experts argue, would not only not improve the housing situation but would cost the economy billions – damaging Australia’s reputation as an international education provider and devastating universities that are “still recovering from the impact of the pandemic,” University of Melbourne vice chancellor Professor Duncan Maskell told the inquiry.
Five of eight Victorian universities reported net operating deficits last year, he said, warning that the proposed caps “penalise the sector for a temporary, larger-than-expected increase in student numbers due primarily to the pandemic lag effect.”
“The government should be aiming to grow the industries that sustain our economy rather than adding more strain.”
